Buyer's Guide: High End System - July 2004
by Wesley Fink on June 30, 2004 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Index
As we detailed in our last High End Buyer's Guide, the guides for High End System and Overclocking System will now come from Wesley Fink, AnandTech's Motherboard, Memory and Chipset Editor. Once the new schedule is in full swing, Wes will have a new guide every 2 to 3 weeks. Evan Lieb will continue the Entry and Mid-Level Buyer's Guides. Evan will also be debuting some new guides, with the goal of a new Buyer's Guide every week once the new guides are launched. The final Buyer's Guides additions are still in the works, so if you have a recommendation for Evan on a Buyer's Guide that you would like to see, then email your ideas to Evan.High End, in my estimation, is not without price limits, but price is much less a consideration than performance. If High End means anything for the enthusiast who reads AnandTech, then you can spend a bit more for performance that is really better. With this in mind, you will see the scales tip toward performance in my choices. Mid-range is where you sweat nickels and measure every component for bang for the buck. For High End, you pick the best.
As in past Guides, we offer a recommendation for every component that goes into a computer. Our recommendation is our First Choice and we will try to explain why we chose that component. For some components, we will also offer an alternative. We've added alternative hardware picks to our guides because it allows AnandTech to recommend a wider variety of hardware. This is especially true for those willing to spend a little more or to recommend a cheaper component that is of outstanding value. Alternative picks provide you other choices, which in some cases will be better suited for your needs, and in other cases, will not be.
Most of the prices listed for the hardware that we recommend can be found in our very own RealTime pricing engine. Any prices not found in our engine can be found on pricewatch. Relevant parts of our RealTime pricing engine are listed at the bottom of every page of our Buyer's Guides so that you can choose the lowest prices from a large variety of vendors.
We are always taking suggestions on how to improve our Buyer's Guides, and the changes you are seeing here are the result of suggestions from our readers and Editors. Considerations include a Buyer's Guide for SFF (Small Form Factor systems), Gaming System, and Laptop/DTP (Desk-Top Replacement). If you have other suggestions, let us know by emailing your suggestions for new guides to Evan; the Guides are to help you with your buying decisions.
High End
A High End system should represent the best performance, features, and flexibility that you can buy for a given need. In this case, the given need is defined as a Desktop Computer System built from the best performing computer components that you can actually buy. This differs from other Buyer's Guides, which concentrate on value first. With the extensive testing done at AnandTech by many different Editors, we have personally tested many of these components, and you will see our Editor's Choice components appear frequently in the Buyer's Guides.With performance as the most important consideration in a high end system, reliability becomes the second most important consideration. Truthfully, reliability is, in most cases, just as important as performance, since it does no good to put together an expensive high end system that you can not enjoy due to reliability issues. By definition, price is a distant third consideration, but price is not the same as value. Value is always a consideration in our buying guides because we refuse to recommend high-priced components that provide little or no performance advantage over lower priced components. A component that costs 250% more for a 5% increase in performance is not a good value and does not even belong in a high end system.
Anyone who is considering building a top-of-the-line system needs to realize that the best performing parts aren't usually going to be the cheapest parts. On the other hand, the value and performance that you get for your dollars in today's computer market are the best that we have ever seen in many years in the computer industry. There was a time when the best desktop systems were much more than $10,000; while today, you are hard pressed to spend more than $5,000 on a top-performing system. In most cases, the best performance can be had even less. With this in mind, our only restriction is that our high end system will cost under $5,000.
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Burbot - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
I wonder what do authors think about recommending good headphones as an alternate for those who do not want or like speakers? Grado SR125 will fit good enough here, wouldn't it?Neekotin - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
hey guys, is the Nu-tech drive capable of Dual layer writing? the NEC drive with a firmware upgrade would seem to be a better choice. although i can barely find some DL media. i also agree with #11 another combo drive would be nice, but that would just be splitting hairs. overall i agree with the guide. great job wes!Zebo - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
Perfect! I would change nothing. :)deathwalker - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
Certainly a very impressive assembly of parts, although I am surprised at the recommendation of parts that are largely not available. I find the selection of the NU-082 very dissapointing. I bought this burner based on a review/recommendation on AnandTech. I have been nothing short of dissapointed with this product..mostly is poor Media compatibility. Bottom line though this system will be a screamer.Sahrin - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
Great article, just one comment. I'd like to echo the concerns already expressed re: the choice of a 6800U. When nVidia's own website is seeking PRE-orders for the card, I doubt it is feasible to recommend it for a system when the better performing-for-same-price X800XT is available right now (granted in limited quanities-you can make the argument that it hasn't been truly released, but there are gamers who bought X800XT's that have them-the same can't be said for any GF6 based card). Other than that, though...rock on.bigtoe33 - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
Only issue i found for me was the creative sound card.While i know they have awesome features etc i know from being a system builder they also cause a lot of issues usually hogging the pci bus etc.For me there are lots of other awesome cards either based on VIA chipsets or Crystal chipsets that are as good with less hogging issues and usually a little cheaper.The other sound card choice for hone recording was fine infact pretty awesome and a card i will be looking to buy.
Thanks for the awesome article.
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
#1 - You make a very good point, as I wouldn't personally have a system without 2 opticals for copying, and I also use a high-speed CD writer for Digital Audio Extraction. Perhaps one of the better combo DVD-CDRW drives could be the 2nd drive to combine with the top DVD burner. We'll take a look at this in our next High-End Guide.rjm55 - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
#6 - While I don't have problems with the recommends in the article, I do agree a high-end system probably deserves an M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 or a Terratec.Also, who is doing audio reviews at AnandTech? I don't recall seeing any in a long time, though it looks like Wesley knows something about audio.
SDwolverine - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
Just built very similar system - slight differences: Asus A8V Deluxe (with luckily a working PCI/AGP lock - thanks for the couple of emails Wesley!) & Athlon 64 3500+, OCZ 3500EB (had Corsair 3200XL but could not get to work), 74Gb Raptor, currently using a 9800 Pro, but have the X800 XT ordered ($434@Gateway 3 weeks ago, blah...good price though). Some benchmarks with the 9800 Pro are:3DMark01: 22,000
3DMark03: 6,100
Sandra Buffered: ~6250/~6150 (running memory 2.5-3-2-8 @ 448)
Have not maxed out any overclocking yet, but I believe I don't really need to, especially with the X800 XT coming.
Also, got the Samsung 193P (I'm used to LCDs, so any minor ghosting is not an issue), and it's unbelievable how crisp, bright, etc. it is.
I'm pretty psyched about the system, the only thing that bums me out is how fast "high end" becomes "mid-range". But I'm sure I'll be able to max out settings at 1280x1024 with AA/AF turned up for quite some time.
For workstation performance, I often work in Excel files that are 20MB+ with complex stat/modeling calcs - with older systems I get 2-3 second delays when processing sensitivities - none on this system and files pull up as fast as notepad docs. ;-)
danidentity - Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - link
Great article, just wanted to point out a small typo.On the "CPU and Motherboard Alternatives" page:
"The new Intel 925X/915 chipsets and Socket 775 processors were finally launched last week. There are many exciting new features that are available with the new 925X/915 chipsets, but performance is really no faster than the current 975P chipset, especially when combined with a Northwood processor."
That should say, "...but performance is really no faster than the current 875P chipset..." not 975P.